Marumiya Oyakodon Chicken & Egg Rice Bowl — 285g

A whole oyakodon in one box, and the rice is already in it. Chicken and onion simmered down in sweet soy and dashi — the savoury stock most Japanese cooking is built on — then set soft with egg over Japanese short-grain rice; three minutes in the microwave and it's dinner. If you ate this in Japan and have wanted it on an ordinary Tuesday ever since, this is the shortcut. Buy it for a desk lunch or a smaller dinner; on a big appetite it is light on its own.

丸美屋 親子丼 ごはん付き. Marumiya oyakodon gohan-tsuki. The gohan-tsuki on the end means the rice is included. The rest is literal: 親 is the parent, meaning the chicken, and 子 is the child, meaning the egg. The -don on the end is donburi: a bowl of rice with something on top.

This is Marumiya's everyday supermarket line: eighteen bowls deep in Japan, sold off the ambient shelf rather than the chiller. It's a weeknight product there, not a restaurant one, and it's honest about that.

What you're getting

• The rice comes with it. Inside the box is a sealed bowl of Japanese short-grain rice and a separate pouch of chicken-and-egg topping, you are not buying a sauce to pour over rice you cooked yourself.
• Sweet-savoury rather than salty: soy and a fermented seasoning with shiitake and bonito dashi behind them. The egg is set soft rather than rubbery, and the sauce carries all the way down to the last of the rice.
• It lives in the cupboard, not the fridge, which is what makes it the thing you fall back on when there is nothing else in the house.
• It leans sweet and it's seasoned gently. A shake of shichimi (Japan's seven-spice chilli blend) or sansho (its citrusy pepper) at the end sharpens it right up, worth having one on hand the first time.
• It's a modest bowl: a 285 g pack, 160 g of it rice. One honest single serve.
• Allergens: contains egg, wheat and soy. There is chicken in it as well, declared in Japan but not an Australian allergen, and between that and the egg there is no vegetarian way to eat this one. Read the pack's own label before you rely on ours.

Heating it: the lid has to come right off the rice bowl before it goes in — not peeled back halfway, all the way off, or the container can burst. Then tip the pouch over the rice, level it out, and rest the lid loosely back on top. Three minutes at 500W, or a minute and a half at 1000W, which is what most Australian microwaves run at. The full method is under How to eat it. Never put it in an oven or a toaster oven.